Heteroflexibility

by Mary Beth Daniels

  Maybe I should kiss him. Just do it. I’d managed the hand hold.

  But dancing was an excuse. He probably didn’t want to kiss girls.

  Or maybe it was like Marvin said, beauty knew no sexual orientation.

  Except I wasn’t beautiful. Not even close.

  “I’m still really sorry about the car ride,” Bradford said.

  “It’s okay. Really.” And it was.

  “My past is not my strong suit. I stay away from it.”

  “Mine is getting that way.”

  “Right. The ex-husband.”

  “I’ve got that to look forward to when we get back.” And homelessness. My stomach hardened over again, steeling itself for upset.

  And here I was, lingering, making a fool of myself—again! I remembered my closed-eye moment the night before, thinking Bradford would kiss me. Oh, the humiliation.

  And there HE was again, leaning forward, just like before.

  I could not be that stupid again. I would not let him think I was some silly little hetero who couldn’t keep a husband OR a best friend, and fawned over someone out of my reach.

  My head banged the wall as I pulled back. I turned and my shoulder pushed the unlocked door open and I stumbled through. Bradford still stood, paralyzed somehow, confused and a bit startled.

  “See you tomorrow!” I waved and closed the door, leaning on it.

  At least I hadn’t made a fool of myself again.

  Chapter 32: Throwing in the Towel

  They were painting Jenna’s dog pink.

  “She’s going to be soooo mad!” Horatio said. I almost didn’t recognize him without the veil, but then when he squatted down to watch the skinny man in a pink cheerleading outfit run a wand of non-toxic finger paint through Butch’s fur, I recognized the thighs.

  Another man bearing pom pons loomed over them. “I don’t want to be around when that girl sees what you’ve done.”

  “Won’t that make the pooch puke?”

  Butch turned to investigate his new color, sniffed at the paint, and turned away.

  “See, she’s a smart puppy!” the pom pon man said.

  The effect was actually pretty cute. Butch remained white at the roots, pink on the fluffy ends of his coat.

  I snapped a shot of the slender brush flowing through his fur.

  I had ridden with the girls over to the softball field in a van, our suitcases now piled up along the dugout wall for our journey home. I wasn’t sure if I was sad or what, but it had certainly been a trip.

  I glanced around for Bradford, who had come over separately with Horatio. I wondered if they were rekindling something.

  I spotted him on the far end of the bleachers, leaning against a tree with several Ball Breakers. They were trying to keep Jenna busy while this new crew, all men dressed as cheerleaders, dealt with Butch. Horatio stood, wiping his hands on a towel. “My work here is done.” He busted out laughing as the Pomeranian suddenly shook herself, spraying pink droplets. I raised my camera just in time to catch the tail end of the moment, the cheerleaders shielding their eyes with their hands, Butch a puffball in pink and white.

  Horatio shook his head. “Jenna’s gonna be one displeased dyke.”

  More pigtailed and pleated-skirt men dashed over now that the deed was done.

  “What a dog!” said one in a gravelly voice. He had more mascara than Tammy Faye Baker and two day’s growth of a beard. I shook my head and lifted my camera. He became energetic then, striking a saucy pose, one pom pon in the air, mouth open in a big girly smile.

  “So are you guys a team, or just a fan club?” I asked.

  The man with the stubble said, “I’m the fabulous Martin(a)—that’s with parenthesis around the a—you get that right on the Google search. We’re the un-official cheerleading squad of the Gay Athletic Alliance teams.”

  A chubby cheerleader with several inches of belly between his top and his skirt pushed forward. “I want to talk to you. Zest, right? I’m Harold.” He shook my hand. “I saw your pictures on the internet.”

  “Dirty pictures?” asked Martin(a).

  “You wish,” said Harold. “From the protest. Girlfriend, they’re everywhere.”

  “Did we look good?” Horatio asked.

  “Uggh,” said Martin(a). “You boys should not do drag in public. Sloppy, sloppy work.” She wagged a finger at Horatio. “I saw your junk.”

  “You did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Ladies!” I said, before I realized what I’d said, and my face flushed. “I mean, gentlemen.”

  They all laughed. “Poor little straight girl,” Martin(a) said. “It’s all right.”

  “I got someone who wants to meet you,” Harold said. “Owns a gallery here in town. Wants to display your pictures.”

  “Really?” I absently reached down to pet the dog, grimacing when I got a handful of pink, sending the cheerleaders into a fit of giggles.

  Harold acted like he didn’t notice. “Come with me. I’ll introduce you.”

  ***

  I felt like skipping across the field as the players lined up for the coin toss. A certain Vincent Amagordo, owner of not one, but two galleries in L.A. and San Diego, wanted limited edition prints of my pictures, immediately, to hang in his gallery for an Election Night Party. I already had a check for five figures and an invitation to attend my own opening if I wanted to stay in California a few more days.

  I hugged my Canon 5D. “It’s you and me baby,” I whispered. “We’re going all the way.”

  A whistle blew, and the players headed out to the center of the field for the coin toss.

  I slipped back into the dugout, where the cheerleaders were arranging their pom pons across pleated skirts and bare knees. “You boys look lovely,” I said. Fern’s fashion sense would have been right at home with this crew. I shook the thought loose. I had to stop thinking of her as a friend.

  “Now who’s THAT morose figure the cat’s dragging in?” asked Martin(a).

  I followed his gaze toward the parking lot. A man with hunched shoulders, head bent, crossed the grass to the bleachers. He looked familiar, then as he got just a little closer, I saw it.

  Cade.

  Unbelievable.

  I exhaled long and slow, trying to control my anger, but my hands were shaking.

  “Uh oh,” Martin(a) said, putting an arm around me. “The diva awakes. Raaawwr.”

  I let him approach, needing the proximity of witnesses to stop me from snatching up a nearby Louisville Slugger and popping him upside the head.

  He saw me when he was about ten yards away and slowed down even more.

  I forced my voice to remain at a normal decibel, but I had a sinking feeling the words weren’t going to come out exactly as I might plan them. I could just shut up, but that was about as likely as Rupaul becoming a lumberjack.

  “What the FUCK are you doing in San Diego?” I didn’t have to ask how he knew where to go. Freaking GPS. I had forgotten about it in the melee yesterday. Should have thrown it in the Pacific last night. But it did mean he’d talked to Fern, to get my whereabouts. I bet that went well.

  “I had to find Fern.”

  “You do that?”

  “No. I left a message telling her I was on a plane and she flipped out, saying she was going to have an abortion.”

  Whew. “Not possible.”

  “I knew she wouldn’t go through with it.”

  “That’s not what I meant. She isn’t pregnant.”

  “She’s not?”

  “Good God, Cade. You know the story of how she and I met.”

  “What?”

  “Home pregnancy tests. Magic markers. Not rocket science to fake that. One line not pregnant, two lines, pregnant.”

  Silence.

  “Did you really think Fern was the sort of girl who would get trapped like that? She’d have told the Virgin Mary to abort.”

  He wavered for a second and Martin(a) rushed forward with a lawn chair, pushing
him down into it. “This is better than Jerry Springer!” he said.

  Cade pulled out his phone, checked it, and put it back away. Probably an automatic act by now, waiting for Fern. “Why would she lie?”

  Why had she? I tried to find a midpoint between what she had said earlier and what I already understood about her. “My first impulse is to say because she’s a manipulating hedonistic bitch. But to be kind, maybe just to test herself on someone who knew how to commit. To see if it was her fault no one ever had stuck by her. I helped clarify that it was most definitely her problem.”

  Cade cleared his throat. “Will you take me back?”

  “Now that’s a segue.”

  “I knew it was wrong to leave you like that. You don’t have any way to make it on your own.”

  “Oh no he DIDN’T just say that,” Martin(a) said. The cheerleaders were piled together, pushing against the rail of the dugout, to listen in.

  “I’m doing okay,” I said.

  “You won’t forgive me?’

  God, in this light it was like he didn’t have any hair at all. Ha, I could still snark. I wasn’t falling for it. “Cade, you said yourself there was no love lost.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “No, you were right.” I choked a little on that, remembering the locket.

  Ivy threw the opening pitch. Blitz was first up. The bat cracked, wild and to the left. Foul ball. I should be shooting. I slid the strap off my shoulder and held the camera in my hands, flipping off the lens cap. “Cade, I gotta go. I’m doing this gig.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “There’s nothing to think about.”

  “But we had five years.”

  “I’d say about four, since you started banging the bimbo a year ago. This is not my problem.”

  “You won’t get anything.”

  I remembered the check. Good thing he made more than me, so he wouldn’t get any of it. “I don’t need anything.”

  “You can’t even keep enough clients to pay for your equipment.”

  “And that’s MY problem, not yours.”

  “You’ll fail.”

  The bat lay on the ground, too tempting, painted black with the word “Vicious” stretching across its slender length in huge white type. Martin(a) was way ahead of me. He scooped it up and passed it to me.

  I aimed it at Cade. “Get out.”

  “You threatening me?”

  “Go.”

  “That’s going to look bad in court.”

  “You see anything?” Martin(a) asked. The cheerleaders shook their heads. “We don’t see anything at all. And I am ready to testify.”

  I stepped forward. Cade leaped from the chair and took several steps away. “You’ve gone crazy. You’ve come to California with a bunch of weirdos and it’s messed you up.”

  I ran my hand along the end of the bat.

  “Actually,” Martin(a) said, “I see you threatening HER. And you’re the big strong man. We’re nothing but helpless girls.” He put his elbow up on another cheerleader’s shoulder. “Poor and defenseless.”

  “You people are sick,” he said, walking backward across the grass.

  I tossed the bat on the dugout floor and sat at the end of the bench, fiddling with my camera settings, hoping to avoid anyone’s eyes. The cheerleaders passed a flask down the line, and I took a grateful swig.

  “He’s a pig,” Martin(a) said. “I don’t even know him, but I can tell.”

  Blitz was on second base. Nikki was up to bat. I concentrated on the game, the warmth of the afternoon, and the smell of hair spray and sweat coming from the cheerleaders. Anything but my life.

  Bradford crossed in front of us, and I couldn’t help but stare at the perfectly fitted denim shorts and a blue tank shirt as he paused to high-five a Hoebag who was waiting for her turn at bat. He and the team had no idea what had just happened.

  I stood up, ready to take pictures again, quickly zooming in on Blitz, Nikki, and the Hoebags in their dugout across the field. I trained my camera on Bradford, then lowered it again.

  “That’s quite a man,” Martin(a) said, leaning on my shoulder.

  “I bet he makes you all twitchy,” I said to him and the other men, who were preparing to head out for a cheer. “Anybody trying to call dibs?”

  Martin(a) pulled back abruptly, his twin ponytails bouncing in two perfect curls. “Girlfriend, are you saying Bradford is gay?”

  “Well, I—” Of course he was gay. He owned a boutique. Dressed right out of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. He arranged hair, for Pete’s sake, and got stood up for his own wedding right as gay marriages were revoked in 2004. And Fern had said so—oh, right, Fern…

  Harry slapped his knee, sending his pom pon shaking. “Girl, you’ve got the gaydar of a republican in a bathroom stall.”

  Across the field, Bradford clapped his hands. “Bring her home!” he shouted.

  He turned to the dugout then, and our eyes met. Suddenly I knew, without a doubt, it was true. All the glances, the hand holds, the easy laughs about relationships. Then the confusion last night, when I pulled away by the door. He thought I wasn’t interested. He really truly wasn’t gay!

  I must have appeared visibly in shock, because he started walking toward me, a quizzical look on his face.

  “Don’t just stand there, go get him!” Harry said, giving me a hefty push.

  Martin(a) snatched up a megaphone. “Time out!” he shouted, jumping crazily outside the dugout door. “Time out for love!”

  Nikki paused, setting her bat back on the plate. Everyone in the outfield, and the Hoebags, and the fans within earshot all turned to the cage.

  I strode toward him, starting slow but rapidly picking up speed. He seemed to understand what was happening, maybe he realized I’d never come at him quite this way before. I felt like was walking away from as many things as I was walking toward, away from Cade, whose rental car was pulling out of the parking lot, away from those five dry years of marriage, away from my silly notion of what constituted commitment both from a partner and from a best friend. I moved toward something else, a boy, a scary beautiful boy, and a whole set of friends and circumstances I’d never even imagined just a week ago.

  But as we neared each other, I remembered my own wedding day, the awkward dance with my groom. The lilies in the hotel room.

  I stopped walking at the memory of Cade telling me, “She’s pregnant.” And of Fern, holding up the orange condoms. The hillbilly on the red matchbook laughed at me as I closed my eyes. I had told Cade he couldn’t file yet, he had dirty laundry to deal with. So did I.

  I could feel him, inches away. He didn’t touch me, and I opened my eyes. “I thought you were gay,” I said. “Fern told me you were gay.”

  His expression was grim. “I realize that now. Just now.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What happened at the Plantation? Exactly?”

  “My bride ditched me. Called me back to her dressing room about an hour before the ceremony. Said she’d found someone else, a more ‘manly man,’ she called it. Thought it would burn out before the wedding day, that maybe it had all been nerves, but it hadn’t. Apparently she spent the night before with him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Are you really?”

  “I am. Maybe just now.”

  He moved for me, and this time I didn’t have to worry about whether he’d kiss me or not, whether he liked girls or not, whether he cared or not. I could see that he did.

  But I took a step back.

  “I don’t think that I’m okay.”

  The crowd had settled down, the field waited in perfect silence, as if they had been anticipating some great finale, and now had only to be patient until the moment happened.

  Bradford nodded. “I understand that.”

  “I—I have to think this through.”

  “Makes total sense.”

&nbs
p; “I still have a long way to go before I’m even single.”

  “You do.”

  “So I—should go.” He nodded and I turned around, crossing the field in the silence, feeling everyone’s eyes on me. The cheerleaders moved aside as I passed. I knelt down by my bag to put the camera away.

  Martin(a) sat beside me in the dirt. “What are you going to do?”

  I snapped the bag closed. “I’ll do what anyone would do if they had no home and no real ties. Start over.”

  Martin(a) hugged me fiercely. “You go girl. I’ll be at your big debut Tuesday night. You should come. Hang out in this strange little town for a bit.”

  “I think I might just do that.” We stood and I purposefully kept my back to the field as I walked through the gate. The bat connected with a ball and the crowd cheered. The game had restarted.

  I had gotten only maybe ten yards away when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned, facing the sun, and had to squint to see who it was.

  Bradford.

  “You heading back to Texas now?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Actually I think I might hang around here. My first gallery show, you know.” I looked around. “I’ve got enough money to photograph palm trees until I can get a client base here.”

  “I’m going back with the others.”

  Of course. I tried not to acknowledge the pinch of regret. “Tell the Hoebags I’ll send them their prints.”

  “I will.”

  I adjusted the bags on my arms. “Well, see you around.”

  He reached out for my arm. “Wait. Zest?”

  “Yeah?”

  “In April I come up for a spring cosmetics show. Here in San Diego.”

  “In six months?”

  He nodded.

  The blue of his eyes exactly matched the sky. I could look forward to photographing them in a thousand different ways. “Then I guess I’ll see you in six months.”

  Epilogue: The Happy Freaking Ending Everybody Insists On. Which Happened.

  Okay, so it wasn’t exactly six months.

  It wasn’t, actually, even six days.

  I called him at midnight on Tuesday, so upset that Prop 8 had passed, banning gay marriage in California. I couldn’t believe it. None of us could believe it.